1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for producing books or other printed materials, and more specifically to an apparatus for creating customized books or other printed materials.
2. Description of the Background
Books and other printed materials typically comprise a series of signatures that have been bound together. Each signature consists of one or more printed pages, wherein the signatures are gathered on a gathering or binding line in a particular order, and are then stitched or glued together to form the book.
Saddle-stitch gathering lines are known and typically include a plurality of packer boxes or feeding devices positioned along a gathering conveyor in the form of a chain, wherein each packer box or a selected set of packer boxes delivers printed signatures in order onto chain spaces of the gathering conveyor. The gathered signatures are then bound, trimmed, bundled, and shipped using well known methods.
Using computer control systems, it is possible to customize a book or magazine in order to target a particular demographic group. This is typically accomplished by selectively enabling and disabling selected packer boxes along a binding line so that a signature designed to appeal to the targeted demographic group is inserted into the book at a designated location.
One known system selectively collates and binds signatures to produce different versions of a particular publication. A version code is associated with each recipient of a publication and is typically stored as part of the mailing list. A controller reads an address and a version code for a recipient and uses the version code to trigger only those packer boxes that contain signatures that are to be bound into a particular publication for that recipient. The controller then directs the address printer to print the address of the recipient on the bound book. The system described allows the creation of books in postal sorted order, wherein each book comprises a subset of signatures loaded into the packer boxes on the binding line where the subset is determined by the version code. This process of customization is called “selective binding.”
In another system for producing customized books, a particular packer box on a binding line is loaded with pre-personalized signatures, which are signatures printed with content personalized for a particular recipient of a book. The pre-personalized signatures are loaded into a packer box in postal sorted order and include indicia such as a barcode or other optically readable marking representing a code associated with the recipient. Upon feeding of a pre-personalized signature from the particular packer box, a reader senses the indicia, identifies the code, and transmits the code to the controller. The controller uses the code to select recipient information from the mailing list. The recipient information may include an address of the recipient, a version code, and/or a device control code. If selective binding is used, then the controller uses the version code to determine the signatures that are to be included in the book for the recipient and selectively triggers the packer boxes that follow the packer box containing the pre-personalized signature accordingly. The controller directs the address printer to print the address of the recipient on the book. The system incorporates a single signature personalized for the recipient to be included in a book. It should be apparent that the controller can use version code to trigger only those packer boxes that follow the packer box that is loaded with the pre-personalized signature.